Day Zero

On the day of departure to Rouen I still had way too many things to do, clean up my room and move all my belongings to the garage - as someone was going to stay over the summer and double/triple check if I had everything that I needed for the journey. This would be completely impossible if not for my girlfriend that helped me immensely and even so we lost the train I wanted to take, which meant the time of transfer between would be very tight.

The train going to Kortrijk was hard to board as it only had very steep stairs and at this point my bicycle had 25kg of baggage, which meant I needed to remove my bags to enter it. The same was the case for the train to Lille, which was rather unlucky as a good amount of Belgian trains have levelled boarding for bicycles and wheelchair users.

As expected the transfer in Lille was very tight and stressful, with only 6 minutes to make it to the other train, things started falling off my bicycle and no one around trying to help I was very much panicking, without wanting to stay an unplanned night in Lille. But luckily I made it narrowly to the train.

Arriving at Rouen I rode off to my AirBNB, it felt very unstable, as I never rode my bicycle with so much weight attached and I started worrying about the trip a lot. My AirBnb was rather nice and I headed off to sleep.

Day One

Before leaving Rouen and heading off to Etretat I decided to take a look at Rouen. I rather enjoyed mainly the center although it had the classical french characteristic of every sidewalking, besides in the center, being paved with asphalt, which I find terribly ugly.

As Rouen sits on a valley I needed to cycle uphill to leave it, which was at the moment a daunting task as I was still not very used to riding with so much weight. It started okay enough but my navigation software decided to take me to a forest path that was so uphill I couldn't even push my bicycle up. After many attempts I needed to take my bags of the bicycle and do this little path a couple times to take everything up, fortunately this path led to an asphalted road.

The next 70km passed in a blur as it was rather easy cycling and I was feeling rather good and excited about the trip but the last 20km of the trip were rather exhausting, but still I was determined to reach etretat on that day and find a nice camping spot by the hills.

And after a lot of toiling I managed to arrive, not to Etretat but to Benouville which was close enough and had the beautiful white cliffs I wanted to see and camp in. After being advised to not go to a place by bicycle by a nice woman that filled up my water bottle I went there and set up camp in one of the coolest places that I camped in the whole trip.

As I was not so experienced in wild camping I felt uncomfortable when people passed by, but this slowly wore off, and I actually had a nice chat with some two guys that came to see the beautiful sunset.

Day Two

I didn´t manage to sleep very well, my body found it weird to sleep in a tent by a cliffside, which I can understand, but it was very annoying. My sleeping mat also decided to desinflate itself which added one extra concern to this trip. Regardless, I was excited to move on to Etretat.

It was easy downhill cycling until there which I enjoyed, and arriving there and seeing the white cliffs in all their glory was rather incredible. I wanted to stay there as long as possible but at the same time I needed to get going before the sun started to cremate me. So after hiking hurriedly to one of the cliffs I went to tackle the climb out of Etretat.

It was hard, harder than I expected, the lack of sleep and experience had already started getting to me. And although it was actually not that warm, that constant direct sun was really harsh for me. But with the goal of getting to La Havre and having lunch there I pushed onwards.

Just when I arrived in La Havre the battery of both my phone and powerbank died, navigation consumed way more juice than I expected. Either way I found a restaurant with not so pleasant staff and chilled there a little.

Feeling still very tired and having to charge my batteries, I went to a nearby public library and rested a little bit. Unfortunately the invention of air conditioning is still unknown to most public french spaces and this combined with great swaths of windows made for a great dry sauna inside. Together with my tiredness and the sun I had to endure resulted in a episode of mini heat stroke, or maybe just heat exhaustion, not really sure.

I spent a couple hours just outside the library, in a nice little fresh spot I managed to find drinking liters of water and regretting my life decisions, being now very aware how stupid of an idea it was to push on.

Eventually, after some two hours, I started feeling better and so I resumed my journey. Before La Havre I passed the Saint Joseph Church, a church in a style I would describe as brutalist which with its amazing interior full of colorful stained glass windows concentrated with the sternness of the concrete walls placed it solidly on the second most impressive church I visited, of course behind La Sagrada Familia cathedral.

I headed off La Havre in the direction of Honfleur passing La Havre’s huge seaport, which although not so pleasant to ride in it made for a needed change of scenery from the endless fields and suburbs.

While researching online for this route I heard that the normandy bridge, the bridge that crosses the Senne to reach Honfleur, is one of the most dangerous parts of the eurovelo network. Its part of a highway where many trucks, coming from the port, cruise by you at fast speeds. The intended bike path is actually just a berm with zero protection from the car traffic unless you count a white line as protection. I, of course, feeling not suicidal this day decided to take the pedestrian path, not much better, but at least it a small little curb and a little more distance to the cars.

I was part very lucky and unlucky for this crossing. I was worried about the possible strong wind, but actually encountered very little resistance from my pal Fūjin or even by buddy Notus. But, my bro Tláloc decided to take inspiration from non other than Judas himself and double crossed me in the form of sudden downpour.

As almost never, I came prepared with a nice rain jacket and started tackling the bridge. It started fine, the speeding vehicles next to me were uncomfortable but fine. But at the halfway point it started to really get to me and the rain was getting more and more intense. Going down was really scary, and I was super glad when I was finally off the bridge.

And then I noticed I forgot to put my sleeping bag on a safe spot from the rain, which meant it was completely drenched, and also that I was almost for sure not camping tonight. With this in mind I reached Honfleur and took too long deciding on a restaurant, when I finally decided on a pizza place I started looking for a place to sleep. I was dismayed to see the cheapest one was 70 euros a night, way above what I was normally willing to pay. But my choices being that or a terrible cold night or sleep or that, I decided it was worth the cost.

The hotel looked like something that would be 30 euros a night but still it provided a rather good night of sleep that I desperately needed.